


Is This A Dream Or A Nervous Breakdown?

by Zakodia



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: A Christmas Carol Sort Of, Canon-Movie, Dreaming, Had an idea had to write it down, Hospital Bed Trope, Kaiju, M/M, Newt deals with his own demons, One-Shot, Post-Canon, Sentient Fax Machine, crackish fic, cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 23:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13398873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zakodia/pseuds/Zakodia
Summary: Everything was great, until it wasn’t. Newt could feel the cold of the LOCCENT floor against his face.“Oh fuuuuuuuc…” was all he could get out before everything went black.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Just a stupid crack-ish dream sequence/hospital bed trope one-shot I had to get out of my head. Newt deals with the inner implications of his drifts with a little help from his dream friends.





	Is This A Dream Or A Nervous Breakdown?

Everything was great, until it wasn’t. Newt could feel the cold of the LOCCENT floor against his face.

“Oh fuuuuuuuc….” Was all he could get out before everything went black.

* * *

 

“It seems like just a very deep exhaustion which, given the past 24-48 hours he’s had, is entirely to be expected.  Eventually your body just gives out. You’re welcome to stay here with him though, if it would make you feel better. I fully expect him to wake up in the next day or two.” The doctor explained to a clearly worried Hermann.

“Thank you” Hermann replied before the doctor turned and left. When he was gone, Hermann grabbed Newton’s limp wrist on top of the bed.

“Why do you never give me a break?” he hissed at him; then decided to give in to his own exhaustion and fell asleep in the chair next to him

Newt slowly opened his eyes, at least he thought they were his eyes. It was a lot darker than he was expecting medical to be, and was that a chandelier? Okay, that explains the lighting, he thought. He slowly turned his head from side to side; those were some very tall bookshelves.  Was he in a library, or a study? He felt beneath him and sat up quickly. He was laying on a red leather couch, like an old-school therapist couch. Was he in a therapist office and why was he here? Did PPDC send him here for his eventual nervous breakdown that he knew was coming?  He stood up to start looking for exits, escape routes the usual.

But before he could even formulate an escape plan, the door opened; and Hermann walked in, wearing his tiny glasses and all.

“Oh of course” Newt thought to himself “It’s a fucking dream”

Hermann would never be caught wearing his glasses unless absolutely necessary.

“Ah Dr. Geizler, how nice of you to awake from your nap. I am Dr. Gotllieb, your new therapist”

He stared at him in amazement.

 “Wher….who…..whaaaat is this place?” Newt tried to get out with some enthusiastic finger waving.

“I believe that information is forthcoming, as I have received a fax,” as he said that, Newt’s attention was diverted to the large fax machine that definitely did not belong in a Victorian study.

“Who the fuck still sends faxes?”

“Your brain apparently” Therapist Hermann replied with a dry sarcasm Newt knew way too well.

“Now if you would lie down again, that would be best; I promise this doesn’t work very well standing up” 

Newt felt compelled for some reason, like he knew it would be useless to argue. This Hermann was not his Hermann. So he laid down and instantly felt better.

 “I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine”

 “Okay.” Newt heard himself answer quietly.

“Let us begin, how do you feel?” Newt snorted, of course that was the first question in his therapist fantasy world. Therapist Hermann, however, was not kidding and continued staring at him. Newt sighed.

“Okay. Well, in the last 24 hours I’ve managed to drift with a small part of a hive mind, be saved by my lab partner, get stabbed in the nose, be hunted by a kaiju, had that kaiju get its tentacles all up in my face - not as bad as it sounds, I promise - and somehow not eat me, then proceeded to have a three-way - drift, I mean - with that kaiju’s baby and my lab partner that looks a lot like you, actually, that I may or may not be in love with, then use that knowledge to save the world, and apparently pass out and then end up here. So overall a very eventful and confusing day. So I guess I would say I feel lost?”

 He sat in tentative silence while he listed to Therapist Hermann scratch his notes out.

“Well, it sounds like you have had many traumatic events happen without much processing time, which is how I expect you ended up here”

“Yeah, sounds about right” Newt said, thinking about how much stupid shit he had accomplished in such a short amount of time.  Real Hermann was definitely going to kill him, whenever he got back to wherever he was supposed to be.

“I meant that’s literally what this fax says, quote 'FROM NEWT’S BRAIN TO NEWT VIA FAKE FAX: SENSORY OVERLOAD: POWER DIVERETED FROM NON-ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS. YOU’VE GOT SOME THINGS TO FIGURE OUT DUDE' end quote. It would also appear in this next fax,” he said shuffling the papers, “that I have appeared to you like this because it is a calming environment and again quote 'Hermann is your closest friend you dumbass, so of course I made him show up' end quote.”

“Wow, my brain has somehow outsmarted me???” Newt thought to himself.

He saw Therapist Hermann look at his watch and gather his papers, “it looks like we are out of time today, but I will see you soon, please think about whatever it is you “need to figure out”.

“Whaaaa- where am I supposed to go? Am I trapped here?! ” Newt said sitting up quickly as Hermann reached the door.

“I think just stay there.” he said before closing the door. 

“Well that was interesting.” he said out loud. He started pacing around the room. He kicked the fax machine.

“You’re stupid and I hate you. Why did you have to put me in this weird dream sequence instead of just telling me what I need to find? What is this, The Matrix?” He yelled at the inanimate object. It spit out two pages in reply before going completely dead.

  1. THAT WOULDN’T BE ANY FUN NOW WOULD IT.
  2. FUCK YOU.



Newt paced around a little more, discovering that the books were just a really nice wallpaper of books, and not real or helpful. He had almost made it around the whole room when he paused and saw something he had not noticed earlier; a fish tank, full of tiny kaiju.

 “Hey guys, whats up” he said quietly, putting his hand up to the tank. He felt himself falling again, this time into the water. It was dark and murky, he could see shapes in the water, they were coming closer and closer. He could hear them hissing, but he strangely felt at ease. He was not panicked nor gasping for air. Being in the dark water felt as natural to him as being on land, and he swam towards a bright light in the distance. A shape moved below him and came between him and the light. Newt gasped. It was the one they had named Slattern; the last kaiju to come from the breach, and it was beautiful. It made a low mournful noise, nodding at Newt. Did it want him to follow it? It swam towards the light and Newt followed. They swam and swam until, at last, they came to The Breach and it 's bright glow. Newt could see a council of kaiju around it, every single one, and he suddenly felt ashamed. He couldn’t have known when he drifted that they were a hive mind, that they were all connected. They couldn’t have know that he had the power to destroy them, that he used their knowledge against them. They were only following orders, did they truly understand what they were doing? Did Newt make them understand? Or were they about to tear him apart? Was this one of the things he had to figure out? Slattern took its place as the head of the council, and Newt heard a chorus in his head,

  _“Why do you wear us but hurt us? Why did you touch us?”_

“Hey, hey, it’s aaahh it’s really complicated okay? So basically I love you.  Like, you guys are freaking awesome, even you Otachi, like the way you’re all clones but you’re all different and the weapons and ahhhhhhh! It's so awesome! Like, like I can’t even begin to explain. You’re endlessly fascinating, and as I- my colleague would say, I’m definetly a kaiju groupie for sure; that’s why I have these,” pointing to his arms, “so I can remember what you looked like before I, uhhhhh cut you up. Yeahhhh … about that, that’s where it gets complicated. So, you’re really cool right, but you also hurt me really bad, you hurt my friends, my family, pretty much everyone. So I had to stop you, even though it hurt me. I had to, I was the only one that could.” He said pleadingly, trying to mentally project his anguish over the decision and the hurt he felt.

“ _Pain, so much pain._ ”

“Yeah not an ideal situation for both of us, I know. I’ll have you know if I had my way you would have had your own nature preserve, like Jurassic Park, uhhh … never mind, you won’t get that reference. Anyways, I touched you because I was desperate, there was no other way. I didn’t know you were a hive mind, and I didn’t realize you would touch back; yeah, my bad on that one. Duh the drift is a two-way street! God, I’m dumb sometimes.”

“ _We wanted to keep you”_

“I probably would have been cool with that, but destroying Hong Kong was not really the way to go about finding me.  So yeah, I touched you again because I needed to know more, I needed the whole picture, and it destroyed you. I know again bad, very bad, but I had to do it for my people, my- my friends; but yeah, really sorry about the whole annihilating the breach and all that, like I said I would have liked to keep you too”

“ _We have forgiven you, little Newton Geizler_ ”

“Phew... thank god, don’t tell anyone this, but I honestly feel a lot better now. Like, I was kind of feeling some complicated guilt there over your deaths, because I shouldn’t put kaiju before humans; but given the quality of humans I was encountering I was really having a hard time with that one, and I really felt bad about the whole hive mind business thing. So yeah thanks, I guess maybe?”

 _“You must return, you have other appointments_ ”

“Oh okay, well bye then…” Newt felt the world turning to black around him.  When he opened his eyes he was back in Therapist Hermann’s office, again on the couch. He heard the door opening again, this must be his other appointment.

 “Hello again, Dr. Geizler” Hermann said closing the door behind him before sitting down and opening his book. “I pray your other appointment went well?”

“Yeah, yeah I think it went as well as it could, I think it was definitely one of the things I was supposed to figure out, would you agree Mr. Evil Fax Machine That Might Be My Brain?” The fax machine made a noise and Hermann got up to fetch it,

 “It says 'YES', now,” he said returning to his chair “There is another matter we must attend to, in your recollection of the last 24 hours you mentioned your lab partner that apparently looks like me.  That you may or may not be in love with?”

“Ugh. Yep, yep this is definitely the other thing I have to figure out.”

“Would you like to elaborate on if you do or do not love him?”

“Well I definitely love him, I’ve loved him since I think email 3, and I was really gone after his first talk.”

“And the problem is?”

 “I….I….I…. just never knew if he returned the favor, ya know? Like, he’s got his own way of doing things and it’s not always the easiest to decipher. It was too high risk, I couldn’t risk our working relationship because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut or keep it in my pants. He always pushed me, needled me, until I was better, made me work harder because I wanted to be better than him. No one had ever done that.  There’s a reason I have 6 PH.D’s; its because I was bored. Hermann was interesting, never boring. If I lost that, there was no reason to keep going at the pace I was, so I couldn’t do it.”

 “Think back to your, um, three-way as you called it, what do you see now?”

 Newt closed his eyes and thought back to the drift, to Hermann’s side of it. There was Hermann staring wistfully at him?! While his back was turned? There was Hermann, up at 3AM just to reply to Newt’s email. And lastly and most painfully, there was Hermann, finding him on the floor after the first drift, shaking him, saying his name softly.

 “Fuck. I am so stupid” Newt said out loud, slapping himself in the face. The fax machine made what could only be heard as a laughing noise before spitting out 3 separate pages that read YES. YOU. ARE.

Therapist Hermann looked at his watch and tutted before closing his book

“Well, it would appear we are out of time again, but I’m afraid we have no more appointments. I must return you to the real me and your real, not a fax machine brain. I can only hope you have realized what you must do.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve got it” Newt sighed before closing his eyes. Damn, he was ready to be out of this dream. When he slowly opened his eyes again, it was finally to the bright medical fluorescent lights he had been expecting. He glanced to his left where Hermann was sleeping uncomfortably in a chair with his hand draped over the side of Newt’s bed. He gently shook Hermann’s hand and Hermann awoke with a jolt. “Newton, you’re awake! Where…..where have you been?” he said grabbing Newt’s hand. Newt grabbed Hermann’s shirt and pulled him in for a 10 year long kiss which was actively and eagerly reciprocated. When they finally broke apart, Newt smiled.

“Just had to figure a couple of things out.” he said before diving in to kiss Hermann again.


End file.
